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Netscape
Netscape is a brand name associated with the development of the Netscape web browser. It is now owned by Oath, Inc., a subsidiary of Verizon. The brand belonged to the Netscape Communications Corporation (formerly Mosaic Communications Corporation), an independent American computer services company, whose headquarters were in Mountain View, California, and later Dulles, Virginia.2 The browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors after the so-called first browser war, its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s3 to less than 1 percent in 2006.4 Netscape is credited with creating the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. The company is also known for developing SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.5 Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US $10 billion.67 Shortly before its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product.8 The Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine;9 all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. The Gecko engine would later be used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. Under AOL, Netscape's browser development continued until December 2007 when AOL announced that the company would stop supporting the Netscape browser as of early 2008.1011 As of 2011, AOL has continued to use the Netscape brand to market a discount Internet service provider.1213 AOL renamed the Netscape Communications Corporation to New Aurora Corporation,14 and transferred the Netscape brand to themselves. AOL sold the former Netscape company now known as New Aurora Corporation to Microsoft, who in turn sold the former Netscape company again to Facebook; the Netscape brand remained with AOL.[clarification needed] The former Netscape company is currently a non-operating subsidiary of Facebook, still known as New Aurora Corporation. Netscape Communications is now part of America Online (AOL). AOL initially envisioned the Netscape Web site as a Web portal, providing a source of revenue through advertising and e-commerce. After the antitrust ruling found that Microsoft had held and abused monopolistic power, Microsoft settled with AOL for $750 million dollars. As part of the settlement, AOL gained the rights to use and distribute Internet Explorer. Although Time Warner formally disbanded the company in 2003, the latest version of the Netscape browser may still be downloaded from Netscape's Web site. Entrepreneur Jason Calcanis leveraged the Netscape brand to create "Propeller," a social bookmarking and news site similar to Digg.com. Software Main article: Netscape (web browser) Classic releases Netscape Navigator (versions 0.9–4.08)edit Main article: Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was Netscape's web browser from versions 1.0–4.8. The first beta versions were released in 1994 and were called Mosaic and later Mosaic Netscape. Then, a legal challenge from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (makers of NCSA Mosaic), which many of Netscape's founders used to develop, led to the name Netscape Navigator. The company's name also changed from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Corporation. The browser was easily the most advanced available[citation needed] and so was an instant success, becoming a market leader while still in beta.[citation needed] Netscape's feature-count and market share continued to grow rapidly after version 1.0 was released. Version 2.0 added a full email reader called Netscape Mail, thus transforming Netscape from a single-purpose web browser to an Internet suite. The main distinguishing feature of the email client was its ability to display HTML email. During this period, the entire suite was called Netscape Navigator. Version 3.0 of Netscape (the first beta was codenamed "Atlas") was the first to face any serious competition in the form of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0.45[citation needed] But Netscape easily remained the number one browser for the time being. Netscape also released a Gold version of Navigator 3.0 that incorporated WYSIWYG editing with drag and drop between web editor and email components.46 Netscape Communicator (versions 4.0–4.8) Netscape Communicator 4.61 for OS/2 Warp Main article: Netscape Communicator Netscape 4 addressed the problem of Netscape Navigator being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming the suite to Netscape Communicator. After five preview releases in 1996–1997, Netscape released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997. This version, more or less based on Netscape Navigator 3 Code, updated and added new features. The new suite was successful, despite increasing competition from Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 and problems with the outdated browser core. IE was slow and unstable on the Mac platform until version 4.5.[citation needed] Despite this, Apple entered into an agreement with Microsoft to make IE the default browser on new Mac OS installations, a further blow to Netscape's prestige.[citation needed] The Communicator suite was made up of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail & Newsgroups, Netscape Address Book and Netscape Composer (an HTML editor). In January 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation announced that all future versions of its software would be available free of charge and developed by an open source community, Mozilla. Netscape Communicator 5.0 was announced (codenamed "Gromit"). However, its release was greatly delayed, and meanwhile, there were newer versions of Internet Explorer, starting with version 4. These had more features than the old Netscape version, including better support of HTML 4, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript; eventually, the more advanced Internet Explorer 5.0 became the market leader. In October 1998, Netscape Communicator 4.5 was released. It featured various functionality improvements, especially in the Mail and Newsgroups component, but did not update the browser core, whose functionality was essentially identical to that of version 4.08. One month later, Netscape Communications Corporation was bought by AOL. In November, work on Netscape 5.0 was canceled in favor of developing a completely new program from scratch. Mozilla-based releases Netscape 6 (versions 6.0–6.2.3) Main article: Netscape 6 In 1998, an informal group called the Mozilla Organization was formed and largely funded by Netscape (the vast majority of programmers working on the code were paid by Netscape) to coordinate the development of Netscape 5 (codenamed "Gromit"), which would be based on the Communicator source code. However, the aging Communicator code proved difficult to work with and the decision was taken to scrap Netscape 5 and re-write the source code. The re-written source code was in the form of the Mozilla web browser, on which, with a few additions, Netscape 6 was based. This decision meant that Netscape's next major version was severely delayed. In the meantime, Netscape was taken over by AOL who, acting under pressure from the Web Standards Project, forced its new division to release Netscape 6.0 in 2000. The suite again consisted of Netscape Navigator and the other Communicator components, with the addition of a built-in AOL Instant Messengerclient, Netscape Instant Messenger. However, it was clear that Netscape 6 was not yet ready for release and it flopped badly. It was based on Mozilla 0.6, which was not ready to be used by the general public yet due to many serious bugs that would cause it to crash often or render web pages slowly. Later versions of Netscape 6 were much-improved[citation needed] (especially 6.2.x was regarded as a good release)[who?], but the browser still struggled to make an impact on a disappointed community.[citation needed] Netscape 7 (versions 7.0–7.2) Main article: Netscape 7 Netscape 7.0 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was released in August 2002 as a direct continuation of Netscape 6 with very similar components. It picked up a few users, but was still very much a minority browser. It did, however, come with the popular Radio@Netscape Internet radio client. AOL had decided to deactivate Mozilla's popup-blocker functionality in Netscape 7.0, which created an outrage in the community. AOL reversed the decision and allowed Netscape to reinstate the popup-blocker for Netscape 7.01. Netscape also introduced a new AOL-free-version (without the usual AOL add-ons) of the browser suite. Netscape 7.1 (codenamed "Buffy" and based on Mozilla 1.4) was released in June 2003. In 2003, AOL closed down its Netscape division and laid-off or reassigned all of Netscape's employees. Mozilla.org continued, however, as the independent Mozilla Foundation, taking on many of Netscape's ex-employees. AOL continued to develop Netscape in-house (with help from Sun's Beijing development center40), but, due to there being no staff committed to it, improvements were minimal. One year later, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2. After an official poll posted on Netscape's community support board in late 2006, speculation arose of the Netscape 7 series of suites being fully supported and updated by Netscape's in-house development team.474849 This was not to be. Mozilla Firefox-based releases Netscape Browser (version 8.0–8.1.3) Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape's releases became known as Netscape Browser. AOL chose to base Netscape Browser on the relatively successful Mozilla Firefox, a re-written version of Mozilla produced by the Mozilla Foundation. This release is not a full Internet suite as before, but is solely a web browser. Other controversial decisions include the browser's being made only for Microsoft Windows and its featuring both the Gecko rendering engine of previous releases and the Trident engine used in Internet Explorer. AOL's acquisition of Netscape Communications in November 199850 made it less of a surprise when the company laid off the Netscape team and outsourced development to Mercurial Communications.[when?] Netscape Browser 8.1.3 was released on April 2, 2007, and included general bug fixes identified in versions 8.0–8.1.25152 Netscape Navigator (version 9.0) Netscape Navigator 9.0 Netscape Navigator 9's features were said to include newsfeed support and become more integrated with the Propeller Internet portal,53 alongside more enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting on web pages.54 It also sees the browser return to multi-platform support acrossWindows, Linux and Mac OS X.55 Like Netscape version 8.x, the new release was based upon the popular Mozilla Firefox (version 2.0), and supposedly had full support of all Firefox add-ons and plugins, some of which Netscape was already providing.56 Also for the first time since 2004, the browser was produced in-house with its own programming staff.57 A beta of the program was first released on June 5, 2007.58 The final version was released on October 15, 2007. End of development and support AOL officially announced1011 that support for Netscape Navigator would end on March 1, 2008, and recommended that its users download either the Flock or Firefox browsers, both of which were based on the same technology.59 The decision met mixed reactions from communities, with many arguing that the termination of product support is significantly belated. Internet security site Security Watch stated that a trend of infrequent security updates for AOL's Netscape caused the browser to become a "security liability", specifically the 2005–2007 versions, Netscape Browser 8.60 Asa Dotzler, one of Firefox's original bug testers, greeted the news with "good riddance" in his blog post, but praised the various members of the Netscape team over the years for enabling the creation of Mozilla in 1998.61 Others protested and petitioned AOL to continue providing vital security fixes to unknowing or loyal users of its software, as well as protection of a well-known brand.626364 Mozilla Thunderbird-based releases Netscape Messenger 9 Main article: Netscape Messenger 9 On June 11, 2007, Netscape announced Netscape Mercury, a standalone email and news client that was to accompany Navigator 9. Mercury was based on Mozilla Thunderbird.65 The product was later renamed Netscape Messenger 9, and an alpha version was released. In December 2007, AOL announced it was canceling Netscape's development of Messenger 9 as well as Navigator 9. Category:Softwares Category:Browsers